Year of the Dragon

The start of my classes last week make Mandarin Chinese the sixth language that I have officially studied with some degree of seriousness. Of the previous five, I would say I can hold a conversation comfortably enough in all but one, Portuguese, which I saw only for a semester and never got to practice. I am not saying this to brag or make some point about my intelligence, in fact, most of my languages were learned out of obligation and circumstance, and all but English are romance languages that are similar enough to each other that I can almost fake my way through them. As far as amateur linguists go, it’s pretty weak to speak the languages I do.

The point that I’m trying to make is that language classes are not a new thing for me. I was obviously aware that Chinese is wildly different from anything I’ve studied before: an entirely different language family means no cognates to speak of (my best friends!), a different and infinitely more complicated writing system, and the ever-dreaded tones. But even knowing that about Mandarin, I hoped for the best. I still thought of the ability to learn languages relatively easily as one of the few things I’d list as an actual skill of mine. I can’t dance at all, I can’t sing without hurting myself or others, and I fail at all activities that require any type of physical speed, coordination, flexibility or balance. I have forgotten all of my math, and I am pop culture illiterate so I am a dead weight on pub trivia teams. But I have languages on my side! Right? …Right?

Maybe it’s a little premature to write about how much I suck at Chinese. I am actually enjoying my classes very much, and I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in this short amount of time given that it’s, well, Chinese. However, I have discovered that, despite how many times I have been told that the more languages you know the easier they are to pick up, I have no noticeable relative advantage to anyone else starting from scratch. My ego is a little sore, but I’m trying hard. 

You don’t just have to memorize the character, what it means, how to say it, and what tone. You also should know the proper order of the strokes, which is why they are numbered in little circles here. That’s the back of Chen Laoshi (Teacher Chen) 

I think the thing I feared the most, like most Westerners, were the characters, but they haven’t turned out to be the worst.

Don’t get me wrong, the characters are insane. In seven days of class I have learned four or five different characters for the syllable “shi,” all with different meanings. There is little to do with characters but memorize them, which is not particularly fun, but here’s the thing: I can see the difference between characters. The tones, on the other hand, are a nightmare and currently the bane of my existence.

There are four different tones in Mandarin, and a fifth, “neutral” one. Each syllable you speak has a different tone, and the tone is related to the meaning of the word itself. For example, the word si can mean alternatively “four” or “death” depending on the tone. In pinyin (the standard spelling of Chinese using the roman alphabet,  the one you’re reading in right now) these tones are expressed as four different types of accent marks, like this: mā, má, mǎ or mà. The way I like to think about it, the first one sounds like you’re tuning in a music class, a little higher pitched than your normal voice. The second sounds like a question. The third, falling then rising, sounds to me like a teenage girl trying too hard to be flirty. The fourth’s like an angry Chinese dad yelling at you. 

These things should all be relatively easy to tell apart, you’d think. But you’re wrong. Not if you’re tone deaf, like me. Maybe all four tones in a row, over the same syllable sound obvious. But on their own, without hand gestures to help you figure it out, and combined with a million other tones over other syllables, I have an impossibly hard time. I already mentioned I suck at music, and a significant part of the time, Chinese class feels like chorus, with a score drawn on the board and all. We sit there and do drill after drill of the same syllable in every tone. And every time it’s my turn to say it, I just giggle because I can’t even tell what the difference is. It’s. So. Hard. 

If there is any positive side to this insanely difficult to pronounce language, it’s the fact that the grammar is so easy. Imagine this: No verb conjugations. No plurals. No gendered nouns. No agreement. Nothing. It’s like this, translated literally: 

I name Laura. I be Colombia person. Tomorrow I come class. I happy meet you.  I very good. You good? 

Here is my sneak video of Chen Laoshi (teacher Chen) teaching us tones. Notice me giggle every time it’s my turn. 

Unlike Coca Cola, I couldn’t hire a consulting firm to find me a name that both sounds like the original (Kekoukele) and has a cool, relevant meaning (tasty fun). Instead, my friend Kay picked a name for me that sounds as close to Laura as Chinese is going to get: Luo La (罗拉). No cool special meanings. That’s both my family name, “Luo,” which in China goes first, replacing Jaramillo; and my given name, “La,” which comes at the end.

With the visa forms all filled out, I believe that has now become my official identity for my time in China. I’m pretty excited about it. 

I have  signed up for classes and, as of tomorrow morning, I will never again know this little Chinese. I will be taking three hours of class every morning, plus homework. It seems pretty intense, but I guess you don’t just casually “pick up” Chinese. Most importantly, this is the way to a 6 month student visa. That’s a fantastic piece of news for me, as those of you familiar with my long list of migration woes will know. 

Despite China’s famous bureaucracy, the paperwork so far has gone pretty smoothly, so I have ALL of my fingers crossed (and my toes, for good measure) hoping that this time the visa is going to come through easily. I use the word “smoothly” very generously, as this morning I had to take various forms of public transportation for nearly two hours each way (uphill, barefoot, in the snow) to get to an international clinic for a health check.  I was subjected to all sorts of medical tests including blood work, a chest X-ray, and some scary test in which wet, cold metallic pliers were connected to various extremities. I also have to go register my new residence at the police station, but so long as my tests come back negative for syphilis, tuberculosis and HIV, I should be all set. 

This is my new student ID, which comes in an awesome little booklet. I love how retro it is, the handwriting, the red seals… Feels like some sort of 1960s ID for revolutionaries. Wish I had worn my un-PC halloween costume from two years ago for the picture:

(Yes, that’s me as Che Guevara. And yes, I did give put a 1960s filter on it just because I could.)

Beijing is a gargantuan city. At 19 million people, it has well over twice the population of New York City, the largest in the US. Full of super sleek skyscrapers and highways so wide they make me fear for my life several times in a single crossing, it is easy to think that the city has lost most of its old charm, its “Chinese-ness.” Except for a few pockets of hutong neighborhoods, monuments, and old temples, most of old Beijing has disappeared under the unforgiving shovel of communism and later modernization. However, despite its gritty concrete jungle look, Beijing keeps finding ways to fill my days with enough bizarre little surprises to keep my heart content.

Yesterday, as I was walking to check out an apartment where I may end up living, I saw a lady with a cartful of stuff for sale. This is quite common on the sidewalks, with people selling all kinds of prepared foods, vegetables, or things like bootleg DVDs and jewelry. But this lady had a cartful of goldfish for sale. I was at first horrified, thinking she was selling them as some sort of snack (would be a pretty Chinese thing, actually. “Here, pick which goldfish you want us to deep fry alive for you!”) But thankfully, it turns out they were actually just pet goldfish. And tiny little turtles. And a minuscule baby rabbit (not sure the latter two won’t end up eaten anyway, once they fatten up a little). It’s not that crazy a thing, I guess, to have a little informal fish tank shop outside in subfreezing weather, but the image of the lady pedaling that thing all the way back to her place, fish flopping from side to side was enough to make my day. And I loved her amusement at how funny I found the whole thing; she even helped me take pictures!

And that’s the other really nice thing about Beijing. It’s a very international city, so except for the occasional country folk, you don’t get a lot of pointing and staring for being a foreigner, like people say you do in other parts of China. But, maybe because they don’t have large groups of immigrants that don’t speak their language, or maybe because they’re aware of how hard Chinese is, they have retained a level of curiosity for outsiders and patience for lack of language skills that would be unthinkable in the States or other places I have visited.

With no exception so far, locals I have interacted with remain cheerful, patient, and helpful to the village idiot that makes up for illiteracy and lack of communication skills by gesticulating wildly and smiling way too much (that would be me). This is so different from what I remember from my first years in the US, when I was terrified of something as simple as ordering food because, more often than not, having a heavy accent (even one that was saying perfectly constructed English sentences!) would result in huge amounts of attitude and even disparaging comments. Looks like this is a good place to try to pick up a new language, let’s hope it works!

PS. Speaking of language ineptitude, today I was walking around one of the remaining old neighborhoods and saw a man frying and selling what appeared to be delicious little round donuts. Craving some sugar in the bitter cold, I bought myself a few. Turns out they were very gooey fish balls. Once I got over the flavor shock, they were actually not bad, but I don’t think they’re something I’ll ever buy again.

PS 2. And further on little weird Chinese language things that amuse me, someone pointed out that our building has no 14th, 24th, or 34th floors. In Chinese, the number four is considered bad luck because it sounds almost the same as the word for “death” (though it is a different tone). I had seen a similar thing in the States, where my grandma’s old apartment complex didn’t have an apartment #13, just a 12A and 12B. But it was still surprising to see it done in such a modern and fancy building. 

What are some of the little things that make you happy in your city?

Of course I expected that sitting down and trying to learn how to write Chinese characters would be hard. Of course I know that it’s not like Italian and Portuguese where you sort of fake your way through the whole thing and it all works out. I knew those things, which is why this may be my most unoriginal statement of all time, but let me just say it again, guys: Chinese is really friggin’ hard.

It seems silly to complain about how hard the language is when I haven’t even taken my first Chinese lesson. But again, I’m not talking about constructing sentences or carrying out complex conversations here. This marks my first whole week in Beijing, and I am not exaggerating when I say I have not been able to memorize the name of the subway stop next to where I’m staying. And it’s not for lack of trying. When I am on the train, there’s is a helpful, sweet voice in English with a perfect American accent that repeats whatever the Chinese announcer is saying. When she says the name of my station, I repeat it after her, so it’ll stick. I say it out loud, ignoring the weirded-out stares of everyone around me: Jintaixizhao. JEEN THAI SHEE JAO. Jeen thai shee jao. 

And the minute I get off the train, I have once again forgotten the name of the station, except for the fact that it starts with the letter J. (As in, I actually had to google it to write this post!). This is the case with the name of every neighborhood I visit, every street, everything. When I’m trying to find my way around, another monumental task on itself, I look up and read the name of the street, and by the time my eyes travel down to the map in my hand, I have forgotten what I just read already. Really. This is not a figure of speech. 

If being incapable of memorizing the simplest of things didn’t have me questioning my intelligence enough on a regular basis, the fact that some basic hand gestures don’t match up is not helping me either. Did you know that holding up six fingers does not mean the number six? Nope. If you want to say six, you better be ready to close your hand and extend your thumb and pinky out to the sides like some sort of market-bargaining superstar. Here’s a picture so you can see what the rest of the numbers are like:

So every time I’m wildly nodding my head up and down (and smiling as much as possible in order to make up with niceness for my annoying communicational impairments) I am left wondering whether that even means yes at all. Freaking out, I get home and google the answer because knowing how to say “yes” and “no” seems pretty important. And I get the following disheartening result:

There are no words that mean “yes” or “no” in Chinese. There are, however, words that roughly compare to English words for “yes” and “no”. The closest word to “yes” in Chinese is shi the verb that means to be. Thus, if someone asks if such and such a condition is true, the answer could be, quite simply shi, “it is”. Another word that fits for general purposes is dui ”true”, which can also be used to affirm any question posed. However, beyond this, the easiest way to say “yes” in Chinese is just by using the appropriate verb for the sentence. For example, if asked ni yao chi wufan ma ”do you want to eat lunch”, the best response may be yao ”want”; or even by answering the entire question in the affirmative.